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“Stop the War, which prides itself on being an anti-imperialist organisation, has an imperialist mind-set par excellence… Syrians are not allowed to have an opinion about their own country. Only Westerners are allowed to talk about Syria.”

The following is republished with permission of James Bloodworth of Leftfootforward.

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The Stop the War Coalition (StWC) have been accused of preventing victims of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad from speaking at an anti-war event.

During a panel event on Monday evening to discuss the case against British military intervention in Syria, StWC included no Syrians on the speaker’s panel and reportedly refused to allow Syrians to speak from the floor.

The meeting was chaired by Labour MP Diane Abbott and featured chair of the Stop the War coalition Andrew Murray, former leader of the Green Party Caroline Lucas, Labour MP Catherine West, Tory MP Crispin Blunt MP and SNP MP Tommy Shephard.

According to human rights activist Peter Tatchell, who attended the event, no Syrians were included on the panel and the Syrian activists who turned up to the event were threatened with arrest.

Speaking to LFF, Tatchell said:

“Some Syrian victims of Assad’s brutalities turned up but were not allowed to speak. They eventually shouted out in frustration, turning the meeting into momentary chaos, as they were jeered by some of the audience and as StWC stewards tried to eject them – allegedly threatening that they’d be arrested. The police turned up soon afterwards.”

Tatchell went on: “Near the end of the meeting, I personally appealed to Diane Abbott to let the Syrians have their say, but she refused and closed the meeting.”

Tatchell’s comments mirrored those of Amr Salahi, an activist from the Syria Solidarity Movement who was also present at the meeting.

“Andrew Murray said absolutely nothing about the people being killed in Syria on a daily basis in Assad’s airstrikes,” Salahi said.

“Murray said that ISIS had to be defeated militarily, and the way to do that was not for the West to get involved but for the Iraqi army and the Syrian army (i.e. Assad’s army) to be helped to defeat ISIS.”

He added: “The [war] was not discussed in reference to the Syrian people in any way. The only focus was on British or American involvement. Not a single Syrian was on the panel. There were Syrians in the audience and at the first opportunity they raised their hands to speak.”

However after raising their disagreements with the StWC panel over the organisation’s views of conflict in Syria, Salahi said the Syrians were prevented from speaking again.

“The first [Syrian activist] to challenge the panel told the speakers they were only looking at ISIS, while Assad was killing dozens of people on a daily basis. [The Syrian] then compared Assad to Hitler, and I told the speakers they were like the Neville Chamberlains of today. [Panellist] Crispin Blunt MP, a supporter of the Iraq war, answered that people in Syria were now looking to Assad to protect them from Islamist extremists. He was unaware that [the Syrian activist in question] had lived in regime controlled Damascus for more than three years since the start of the revolution,” Salahi said.

He added: “After this intervention, no other Syrians were permitted to speak. [The panel] kept opposing the possibility of Western intervention as if that was the only factor. Clara Connolly, an immigration lawyer and activist with Syria Solidarity UK, later told the StWC they were silent about Assad’s crimes but they didn’t care. I told the speakers they just wanted Assad to keep killing people. Clara kept trying to make the point to the speakers that they had nothing to say about what was happening on the ground. All she got in return was silence. Then some of the organisers went up to her and warned her that if she didn’t be quiet, she would be forced to leave.”

Peter Tatchell told LFF a similar story: “When it came to questions from the floor, other members of the audience were asked to speak but not the Syrians. Near the end of the meeting, I personally appealed to Diane Abbott to let the Syrians have their say but she refused and closed the meeting.”

Tatchell added that he was “shocked, surprised and saddened by Diane Abbott’s unwillingness to invite Assad’s victims to express their opinions”. He added that not listening to victims of Assad’s war crimes was “arrogant, insensitive and appalling. It has a whiff of ‘we know best’ and Syrian opinions ‘don’t count’”.

This is not the first time Syrians have been prevented from speaking at a StWC event on Syria. In September, in reply to a letter from Syria Solidarity UK asking StWC to include a Syrian in a separate panel event on Syria, StWC’s Lindsey German replied that it was “not appropriate” to hear from Syrians if they did not clearly oppose military intervention.

“Stop the War, which prides itself on being an anti-imperialist organisation, has an imperialist mind-set par excellence,” Salahi said. “Syrians are not allowed to have an opinion about their own country. Only Westerners are allowed to talk about Syria.”

As Europe struggles to deal with a surge in refugees, attention is now shifting to Syria where most people are coming from. But what is the violence they’re fleeing?

Many assume that Isis is doing most of the killing, which is partly why so many countries are now talking about bombing Isis in Syria. But the truth is different – and shocking. The vast majority of Syrian civilians killed – more than 95% according to human rights groups – have been killed by the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

Have a look at the data from the Syrian Network for Human Rights [1]:

Lots of people respond with astonishment when they see these figures, mostly because they don’t fit with their existing picture of the conflict. Some even say the numbers are lying. They’re not. While no monitoring group claims to have perfect data since their methodology and sources all differ, there appears to be agreement about the proportion of civilians killed by the Assad regime. [2]

So why do so many of us have such a bad understanding of where the violence is coming from?

Part of the answer may lie in how we hear about the conflict in Syria. The media talks about it increasingly as a “civil war”, a phrase that conjures up images of messy chaos, of various similarly-matched sides fighting each other. Likewise, the United Nations and well-meaning NGOs diligently criticise “all parties to the conflict” which promotes a perception of equal sides – or some sort of balance.

But there’s something else too. Part of the answer may lie in the disproportionate obsession with Isis. Our news is full of stories of Isis horror and brutality, but the larger scale state repression of the Bashar al-Assad regime seems to slip by mostly unreported.

Have a look at Google Trends for news over the past year:

Google Trends: Assad vs Isis

There was 43 times more interest in Isis than there was in Bashar al-Assad. And that’s taking in global internet users.

When we filter by United States only, we get an error message:

“Bashar al-Assad wasn’t searched for often enough to appear on the chart. Try selecting a longer time period.”

Same goes for the UK, France and Germany.

Astonishing. Together we have collectively airbrushed the biggest perpetrator of human rights violations out of the the Syrian conflict – Bashar al-Assad.

Why has the world chosen to ignore Assad’s crimes? Is it because he claims to be a secular leader? Is it because he is clean shaven and wears a suit? Is it because we don’t realise that by ignoring these crimes by the regime, we are becoming recruiting cheerleaders for Isis? [3]

Whatever the reason, the obsession with Isis over Assad bears no relation to their respective levels of violence.

The implications of this skewed focus are serious.

Right now the UK government is debating intervening in Syria to strike Isis. [4] Australia has just started anti-Isis strikes too. [5] France is about to join.[6] Russia has moved a heavy deployment of fighter jets and tanks into Syria to fight alongside Assad. [7] Russia has just days ago agreed to coordinate with Israel on its Syria operations. [8]

And yet nobody, nobody, is doing anything to curtail the biggest killer in Syria by far – the Assad regime and its air war on civilians.

As the United Nations envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura said, it is “totally unacceptable that the Syrian airforce attacks its own territory in an indiscriminate way, killing its own citizens. The use of barrel bombs must stop. All evidence shows that the overwhelming majority of the civilian victims in the Syrian conflict have been caused by the use of such indiscriminate aerial weapons.” [9]

All efforts at stopping the violence in Syria will fail unless we understand where it is coming from. The story of the data is unarguable – if we want to stop the killing of civilians in Syria we have to address the Assad regime.

What can you do?

Arm those around you with the facts. Share this with your friends and family.

We have used data from the Syrian Network of Human Rights to put together more infographics, on children, medical workers and media activists. You can view and share them here:

The Syria Campaign is building an open, global movement working for a peaceful future for Syria. We are people from all over the world who are coming together to tackle what the UN has described as “the greatest humanitarian tragedy of our time”.

The left has a proud history of opposition to fascism and indeed is the most reliable anti-fascist group politically. It is a puzzle as to how and why what passes for ‘left wing’ today can either be so neutral toward the Assad regime or adopt the entirely crypto-fascist slogan ‘Hands off Syria’. The puzzle is explained, in my opinion, by the fact that the left is more than a self-identifying label. It has a real content, defined by history, practice and theory. If someone tells you that western military involvement on the side of the Syrian people against the regime would be a disaster for the region, just ask the fundamental question: “A disaster for whom?” To those who beat their chests warning that US imperialism is out to dominate the region and that that claim somehow should mean leaving the unarmed populus to Assad’s barrel bombs, just tell them: “Your anti-imperialism is worthless if it ends up putting you on the side of the regional dictators who are oppressing and massacring the people as we speak”.

I wish to thank the good people at NOW. for permission to publish this article by Haid Haid, who is a program manager at the Heinrich Böll Stiftung’s office in Beirut. He tweets @HaidHaid22

c21styork

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Assad is trying to turn his problems into opportunities by helping ISIS (Daesh; ISIL) choose what’s in his own best interests and allowing ISIS easier access to some areas than to others.

“Reports indicate that the regime is making air-strikes in support of#ISIL‘s advance on #Aleppo, aiding extremists against Syrian population,” the US Embassy in Syria tweeted on 1 June. Similar reports were published by other regional and international media outlets when ISIS made an unexpected and successful move against rebel groups north of Aleppo, disrupting their recent momentum.

To many of those who have been closely following what’s happening in Syria, this might not come as a surprise. Assad has avoided confronting ISIS, as they both benefit from one another. ISIS degrades and eliminates rebel groups that would otherwise be fighting Assad, and Assad’s regime presents itself to the West as the only local partner that can fight the terrorist group. This—at least publicly—unspoken agreement was broken in June last year after ISIS announced its caliphate. It seems, however, that the same arrangement is back on the table with some amendments due to recent developments.

Game changer Palmyra

Seizing Palmyra gave ISIS the advantage of many new strategic options, which will most likely change the dynamics of the armed conflict in Syria. The strategic location of Palmyra has allowed ISIS to cut the regime’s supply line to Deir Ezzor, and it opens the possibility of capturing other strategic locations, such as the Shaer gas and oil field. The broad desert has given them many alternative roads to various areas of Syria to expand and enforce their presence there; eastern Ghouta and eastern Qalamoun, rural Hama, rural Homs and rural Sweida. Capturing Palmyra was a game changer not only for ISIS but for the regime as well. Just consider the big number, and high symbolic value, of Assad regime losses on various fronts; the fear of the next rebels attack; the continued draining of resources (locally and regionally); the withdrawal of Iraqi militias who have returned home to fight; and the division in strategies between Assad and Iran—the former still trying to control all provincial centers, the latter restricting itself to areas considered useful within Iranian strategy.

Revised strategy

These developments have pushed Assad and his allies to find ways to cut down their losses and to conserve resources. It seems that Assad has found a way to turn his problems into opportunities by giving ISIS access to areas controlled by the rebels in order to drain their resources as they fight away from the regime, and he does so even if this costs him more territory. In Aleppo, for example, ISIS could advance through regime-controlled areas, including As-Safirah or Kweires Air Base, given the importance of these locations and due to pressure on the regime by other rebels groups in Idleb, combined with rumors that an Aleppo battle will be launched, which has made the regime even weaker. Even though capturing air bases might be considered its most important strategic goal, ISIS instead decided to intensify its attacks on areas controlled by rebels along the Suran-Mare axis in rural Aleppo. The regime also intensified its attacks on areas that have helped ISIS advance and control new villages. These developments forced many rebel groups, including members of the Army of Conquest coalition, to mobilize their forces and move them to prioritize fighting ISIS over the regime—at least in Aleppo.

The regime might also help ISIS to enforce its presence in eastern Ghouta, which will help the regime completely besiege Ghouta and engage rebels in another fight. Some recent reports mentioned that the regime has been busy transporting equipment from Al-Seine Airbase to Ad-Dumayr Airbase, which Assad’s opponents interpret as an evacuation plan. If this is the case, it could mean that the regime is either trying to conserve resources, or is scared that it might lose the air base, or both, which in any case will give ISIS access to eastern Ghouta. The same thing could also apply in eastern Qalamoun, Ar-Ruhaybah and Jayrud, to enforce their presence there and to keep the opposition busy in the fight against it.

US inaction

While the air force of the American-led coalition played a large role in defeating ISIS in Kobani, it didn’t react to ISIS’s latest attack on rebel-held areas, which gave ISIS the opportunity to move its forces freely. Many rebel leaders complained publically about the lack of US interest in helping them defeat ISIS in Syria, though it’s now apparent the US administration knows of the cooperation between Assad and ISIS. Sarcastically, activists started wondering if the US Air Force didn’t strike ISIS because Assad had crowded up the sky striking rebel groups. Maybe sarcasm is the only way that many Syrians, and to some extent non-Syrians, are able to understand US policy towards fighting ISIS.